Invaders from the Infinite - John W. Campbell (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📗

There, a mass of compact boxes were piled one on another, and interconnected in various and indeterminate ways. And one table lay in a brilliant path of illumination. Behind it stood Arcot. He was talking to the dim white group of faces beyond the table, the scientists of Earth assembled.

“I have explained our power. It is the power of all the universe⁠—Cosmic Power⁠—which is necessarily vaster than all others combined.

“I cannot explain the control in the time I have at my disposal but the mathematics of it, worked out in two months of constant effort, you can follow from the printed work which will appear soon.

“The second thing, which some of you have seen before, has already been partly explained. It is, in brief, artificially created matter. The two important things to remember about it are that it is, that it does exist, and that it exists only where it is determined to exist by the control there, and nowhere else.

“These are all coordinated under the new mental relay control. Some of you will doubt this last, but think of it under this light. Will, thought, concentration⁠—they are efforts, they require energy. Then they can exert energy! That is the key to the whole thing.

“But now for the demonstration.”

Arcot looked toward Morey, who stood off to one side. There was a heavy thud as Morey pushed a small button. The relay had closed. Arcot’s mind was now connected with the controls.

A globe of cloudiness appeared. It increased in density, and was a solid, opalescent sphere.

“There is a sphere, a foot in diameter, ten feet from me,” droned Arcot. The sphere was there. “It is moving to the left.” The sphere moved to the left at Arcot’s thought. “It is rising.” The sphere rose. “It is changing to a disc two feet across.” The sphere seemed to flow, and was a disc two feet across as Arcot’s toneless voice of concentration continued.

“It is changing into a hand, like a human hand.” The disc changed into a human hand, the fingers slightly bent, the soft, white fingers of a woman with the pink of the flesh and the wrinkles at the knuckles visible. The wrist seemed to fade gradually into nothingness, the end of the hand was as indeterminate as are things in a dream, but the hand was definite.

“The hand is reaching for the bar of lux metal on the floor.” The soft, little hand moved, and reached down and grasped the half ton bar of lux metal, wrapped dainty fingers about it and lifted it smoothly and effortlessly to the table, and laid it there.

A mistiness suddenly solidified to another hand. The second hand joined the first, and fell to work on the bar, and pulled. The bar stretched finally under an enormous load. One hand let go, and the thud of the highly elastic lux metal bar’s return to its original shape echoed through the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second century knew what relux and lux metals were, and knew their enormous strength. Yet it was putty under these hands. The hands that looked like a woman’s!

The bar was again placed on the table, and the hands disappeared. There was a thud, and the relay had opened.

“I can’t demonstrate the power I have. It is impossible. The power is so enormous that nothing short of a sun could serve as a demonstration-hall. It is utterly beyond comprehension under any conditions. I have demonstrated artificial matter, and control by mental action.

“I’m now going to show you some other things we have learned. Remember, I can control perfectly the properties of artificial matter, by determining the structure it shall have.

“Watch.”

Morey closed the relay. Arcot again set to work. A heavy ingot of iron was raised by a clamp that fastened itself upon it, coming from nowhere. The iron moved, and settled over the table. As it approached, a mistiness that formed became a crucible. The crucible showed the gray of pure iron, but it was artificial matter. The iron settled in the crucible, and a strange process of flowing began. The crucible became a ball, and colors flowed across its surface, till finally it was glowing richly silvery. The ball opened, and a great lump of silvery stuff was within it. It settled to the floor, and the ball disappeared, but the silvery metal did not.

“Platinum,” said Morey softly. A gasp came from the audience. “Only platinum could exist there, and the matter had to rearrange itself as platinum.” He could rearrange it in any form he chose, either absorbing or supplying energy of existence and energy of formation.

The mistiness again appeared in the air, and became a globe, a globe of brown. But it changed, and disappeared. Morey recognized the signal. “He will now make the artificial matter into all the elements, and many nonexistent elements, unstable, atomic figures.” There followed a long series of changes.

The material shifted again, and again. Finally the last of the natural elements was left behind, all 104 elements known to man were shown, and many others.

“We will skip now. This is element of atomic weight 7000.”

It was a lump of soft, oozy blackness. One could tell from the way that Arcot’s mind handled it that it was soft. It seemed cold, terribly cold. Morey explained:

“It is very soft, for its atom is so large that it is soft in the molecular state. It is tremendously photoelectric, losing electrons very readily, and since its atom has so enormous a volume, its electrons are very far from the nucleus in the outer rings, and they absorb rays of very great length; even radio and some shorter audio waves seem to affect it. That accounts for its blackness, and the softness as Arcot has truly depicted it. Also, since it absorbs heat waves and changes them to electrical charges, it tends to become cold, as the frost Arcot has shown indicates. Remember, that that is infinitely hard as you see it, for it is artificial